This proposed system represents an improvement to an existing product or process, referred to herein as “Fantasy Sport.”
Fantasy Sport (also known as rotisserie, roto, or owner simulation) is a type of online game in which participants build and manage a fantasy team comprised of real individual players or teams of a professional (or college) sport. These teams then compete against the teams of other fantasy-team-owners in the same league. A variant converts statistical performance of real individual players or teams into points that are by each fantasy team. These point systems can be manually calculated by a “league commissioner.” Some variants of Fantasy Sports use computer modeling based on statistical input generated by professional (or college) sports (rather than manual calculations). In Fantasy Sports there is the ability to draft, trade, cut, and sign players, like a real sports team owner or manager. Variations of Fantasy Sports include: Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Football, Fantasy Basketball, Fantasy Golf, Fantasy Auto Racing, Fantasy Cricket, Fantasy Hockey, Fantasy Wrestling, and Fantasy Mixed Martial Arts.
The concept of picking real players and running a contest based on their statistical performance originated in the late 1950s when. Wilfred Winkenbach devised Fantasy Golf. In the original version of Fantasy Golf, each player selected a team of professional golfers and the player with the lowest combined strokes at the end of the tournament wins. Daniel Okrent is credited with inventing Fantasy Baseball in 1980 (“La Rotisserie”). The game's innovation was that fantasy-team-owners in a Rotisserie league draft teams comprised of active Major League Baseball players and would follow their statistics over time through the entire season to compile their scores week after week (rather than using statistics for seasons whose outcomes were already known). Thus, fantasy-team-owners would be required to make predictions about players' playing time, health, and expected performance week after week throughout the season. The next major advance in Fantasy Sport was the migration to the Internet in the mid-1990s. Online Fantasy Sports facilitated the task of tracking statistics and calculating fantasy scores. Moving to an online platform also facilitated the introduction of new features, including real-time statistics and scoring updates, as well as opportunities for social interaction. Today's Online Fantasy Sport platforms offer rich social networking features, including fantasy-team-owner profiles, online message boards, and private electronic messaging.
U.S. application no. 2008/0176655 A1 discloses a system and method for implementing an interactive online community utilizing an activity monitor. The '655 application discloses generic interactive online community or game environment features be built alongside or in support of activity monitoring. The '655 application includes a set of straightforward methods for translating activity into points in an online game environment.
In most variety of contemporary Fantasy Sport, whether administered online or manually, the game is a sedentary activity with regard to fantasy-team-owners.